"There will come a point in the future in which America will determine that it has to move forward with a development phase that is not allowed by the treaty right now," Hutchison said.

Earlier in the day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia to be more transparent and to explain its alleged breaches of the INF Treaty.

Tensions and Accusations

Addressing the NATO stance on the INF, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned about the perils of "aggressive rhetoric."

"It seems people who make such statements do not realize the degree of their responsibility and the danger of aggressive rhetoric. Who authorized the lady to make such statements? The American people? Do ordinary people in the United States know that the so-called diplomats paid out of their pocket behave aggressively and destructively?" Zakharova told reporters.

The 1987 INF Treaty prohibits the development, deployment, and testing of ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles. Moscow and Washington have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty.

According to the US, the new Russian 9M729 missile systems violate the conditions of the pact, as they give Russia the possibility of launching a nuclear strike in Europe with little or no notice.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has said that the 9M729 missiles correspond to Russia's obligations under the INF Treaty and have not been upgraded and tested for the prohibited ranges. Moscow also noted that Washington had never provided any evidence that Russia had violated the agreement because such proof does not exist.

Hutchison also commented on the recent referendum in Macedonia, which settled a decades-long conflict with Greece, allowing Skopje to enter NATO.

"We are very pleased that they got over a 90 percent vote in the referendum that they had, and we now look to the people of Macedonia and the Parliament to take the next step and we hope to welcome Macedonia, Northern Macedonia, as a new member of our alliance in the near future," the US envoy said.

Earlier on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that accession talks have already started and negotiations to make Macedonia part of NATO could be completed by January 2019.

According to the Sunday referendum, 91.46% of voters chose to rename the country, while 5.65% voted against the agreement with Greece. However, the turnout amounted to just 36.91%, meaning that the referendum failed to secure the 50% turnout needed to be valid. Despite this, the country's prime minister, Zoran Zaev, supported the results and pledged to proceed with ratifying the agreement.

Hello,
!

We are committed to protecting your personal information and we have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new EU regulation that went into effect on May 25, 2018.

Please review our Privacy Policy. It contains details about the types of data we collect, how we use it, and your data protection rights.

Since you already shared your personal data with us when you created your personal account, to continue using it, please check the box below:

I agree to the processing of my personal data for the purpose of creating a personal account on this site, in compliance with the Privacy Policy.

If you do not want us to continue processing your data, please click here to delete your account.

promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;

contains links to viruses and malicious software;

is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");

“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;

violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");

doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.